People vary in their performance on visual working memory tasks, and these individual differences covary with a wide range of higher-level cognitive processes including fluid intelligence. Performance also varies across study displays, purportedly driven by both low- and higher-level processes. Understanding what causes these sources of systematic…

It has been reported that visual statistical learning (VSL) is facilitated in skewed distributions. However, it remains unclear whether enhancement of VSL in Zipfian distributions is due to consciousness of the regularities presented at high frequency. This study addressed this issue. We measured participants' subjective confidence in regularities…

In the field of numerical cognition, researchers conventionally assess nonsymbolic numerical abilities with the help of number comparison tasks, in which participants need to compare two arrays. Many studies emphasized that visual (non-numerical) dimensions can serve as strategic cues and influence the decision on numerosity in these tasks. In…

Can we use attentional control to ignore known distractor features? Providing cues before a visual search trial about an upcoming distractor color (negative cue) can lead to reaction time benefits compared with no cue trials. This suggests top-down control may use negative templates to actively suppress distractor features, a notion that…

The study takes place in the setting of Wat Phumin, located in Nan Province, Thailand. This revered temple has proudly maintained its magnificent presence for centuries, earning worldwide acclaim as a symbol of timeless greatness. Located in northern Thailand, Wat Phumin in the province of Nan captures the attention of visitors with its intricate…

In this study, we implemented a visual illusions contest as an educational activity within the practical programme of the subject "Perception and Attention" (Bachelor's Degree in Psychology). The contest was evaluated by verifying its effectiveness as a teaching tool for achieving the competences assigned to the course. We designed…

The presented study examines the question of colour categorization in relation to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. The study is based on research conducted by Gilbert et al. (2006) and their claim that linguistic colour categorization in a particular language helps colour recognition and speeds the process of colour discrimination for…

It is a prevailing theoretical claim that path integration is the primary means of developing global spatial representations. However, this claim is at odds with reported difficulty to develop global spatial representations of a multiscale environment using path integration. The current study tested a new hypothesis that locally similar but…

Images are central to our understanding of and learning about our world. We argue that visual training needs to be improved in the higher education system to enhance the potential of visual thinking to mediate productively our relationship with the context we inhabit. Initiatives from the social sciences and humanities since the end of the twenty…

Working memory (WM) has a limited capacity; however, this limitation can be mitigated by selecting individual items from the set currently held in WM for prioritization. The selection mechanism underlying this prioritization ability is referred to as the focus of attention (FOA) in WM. Although impressive progress has been achieved in recent…

Ancient as well as modern writers have promoted the idea that bizarre images enhance memory. Research has documented bizarreness effects, with one standard technique finding that sentences describing unusual, implausible, or bizarre scenarios are better remembered than sentences describing plausible, every day, or common scenarios. Not…

Recent evidence in adults indicates that object perceptual processing is affected by the competition between action representations. In the absence of a specific motor plan, reachable objects associated with distinct structural (grasping) and functional (using) actions (e.g., calculator) elicit slower judgments than objects associated with similar…

People's expectations help them make judgments about the world. In the area of spatial memory, the interaction of existing knowledge with incoming information is best illustrated in the category effect, a bias in positioning a target toward the prototypical location of its region (Huttenlocher et al., 1991). According to Bayesian principles, these…

Ratings of perceptual experience on a trial-by-trial basis are increasingly used in masked priming studies to assess prime awareness. It is argued that such subjective ratings more adequately capture the content of phenomenal consciousness compared to the standard objective psychophysical measures obtained in a session after the priming…

Using Chinese characters, we investigated how stroke count and frequency of use influence attention and short-term memory (STM) encoding in Mainland Chinese speakers. To isolate specific components of attention we employed the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), which allowed estimates of STM capacity, processing speed, and the threshold of visual…